Cursive: 'Mama, I'm Swollen'

Tim Kasher says this follow-up to "Happy Hollow" doesn't have to be a concept album. But it kind of is, with most songs weighing in on what it means to be a grown-up in 2009.

Cursive: 'Mama, I'm Swollen'

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And Kasher's inner 20-something isn't going quietly. He's 34 now and kicking things off with a mantra of, "Don't want to live in the now/Don't wanna know what I know," while the lead guitars recall the scrappy art-punk genius of those first few Richard Hell releases.

The moodier "Donkeys" finds him looking to "Pinocchio" for inspiration, one character scolding another with, "Isn't it time you act your age?/You got a mortgage on your shoulders, got a babe on the way," and the other responding, "Oh no, I'm goin' to Pleasure Island. I don't want to come home."

It all comes down to "From the Hips," it seems, where Kasher wonders if we weren't all happier before we got so civilized. "I hate this damn enlightenment," he sighs, before insisting, "We were better off as animals." Of course, an unenlightened thinker wouldn't think to ask these questions. That's what makes this album so intriguing. It's a thinking person's manifesto on the lost art of getting in touch with the animal side of human nature. And it rocks.